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ON THE SEAT OF A PIT TOILET AT A TINY REST AREA OFF U.S. 395 IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

My wife was driving. We were on the way home from yet another work-related trip to a remote corner of California.

“Ha-ha, laughs and giggles,” I told my wife. “This is funny but I really, really need to stop and use the rest room as soon as we see one. Funny, I know, because there’s no place to stop.”

We were in the middle of nowhere, amidst hayfields on both sides of Highway 395, 65 miles south of Alturas CA, 116 miles north of Reno NV. Luckily for me, a sign appeared on the horizon, “Rest Area 1 Mile.”

Sure enough, we came upon said rest area and I toddled off to the side of the building marked “Men’s.” Happily, no one was occupying the premises.

To my chagrin, as I bolted the latch, I found myself in the dark. I felt around for a light switch and found none. By the bit of sunlight coming in through three small grates, I stared deep into the filthy bowels of what I vaguely recognized as a pit toilet. Perhaps it was the lack of a flush handle that gave it away. Or perhaps it was a flashback to a camping trip with my family when I was eleven years old. Six of us crowded into a tent, and my father would wake up to ferry us to the latrine in the middle of the night by flashlight. The venue was a campground near the tiny town of Gilboa in upstate New York. I had no idea that the place was named after the location of a Biblical battle, but I did develop an impressive case of butt rash.

I hope I avoid that ignominous fate in my current situation. In my urgency, however, I was left with no choice but to grit my teeth and sit down. I count my blessings, for there is not one, but three rolls of toilet paper at my disposal here.

I brought some trash from the car to dispose, but no trash basket is in evidence. Worse, however, is the fact that there is no sink. So, after squatting over this putrefying hole, I won’t even be able to wash my hands.

Oh, gee. Some poor soul is rattling the door handle, desperate to get in. I hear a slight moan, and then what can only be described as a retch. Listening to the wretch retch, I can only feel sorry for this poor person. “Look,” I privately reason with him, “you can puke your guts out on the lawn of this rest area, making a horrible mess in the process, and everyone will take pity on you. I, on the other hand, do not have the option to drop trou, grunt loudly, and violently defecate in the sunshine without being promptly arrested for indecent exposure and summarily hauled off to jail in the CHP paddy wagon. And what would I tell my boss when I call out from work tomorrow? You, my friend, can call in sick. I, on the other hand, will have some splainin’ to do.”

Back at the car, my wife gripes about finding a similarly disgusting situation in the women’s room. “Do we have any hand wipes?” She asks. “Ah, we have one left. There should at least be a place where you can wash your hands!”

We share the single remaining pre-moistened towelette as we fly down the road. We need to find someplace to stop for lunch.

But first, we need to wash our hands. With lots of hot water and soap.

In her recent book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, journalist Jessica Bruder delves into the subculture of aging Baby Boomers who have been priced out of traditional (“sticks and bricks”) homes and apartments (by layoffs, ageism in the workplace, debt and bankruptcy, underwater mortgages, health challenges and the woeful inadequacy of a monthly Social Security check) and have found new lives wandering the nation and working short-term jobs while living in their “wheel estate” (vans, campers, RVs, old school buses and even compact cars). In between gigs as seasonal help at Amazon warehouses (ten to twelve hour shifts spent squatting, reaching and walking miles of concrete floors with a hand scanner), working the sugar beet harvest in North Dakota, and serving as “camp hosts” at remote state and national parks, they alternate between “boondocking” (camping in desert, mountain and wilderness middle-of-nowhere locations, sometimes legally, sometimes not) and “stealth camping” (staying overnight in their rigs at the far reaches of Wal-Mart parking lots, at 24-hour truck stops and gyms, or even on suburban streets). These kings and queens of the road meet other like-minded souls, forge friendships, form loose-knit clans, trade knowledge, help each other out, share their meager possessions, and follow each other to the desert Southwest in the winter, to the coolness of the woodsy mountains in the summer, and to annual gatherings such as the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (organized by longtime van dweller, Bob Wells) off Dome Rock Road, on the outskirts of Quartzsite, Arizona.

I am fascinated by this phenomenon on multiple levels. For one thing, I have more than a passing familiarity with many of the locations described by Bruder. Having lived and worked in Blythe, California for three years, I am painfully aware of the Podunk nature of Colorado River hamlets such as Ehrenberg, Arizona and the summertime ghost town imitation performed annually by “the Q.” The former is the place that everyone in Blythe goes to gas up their vehicles at one of the two truck stops, due to petrol prices often running 50 cents or more per gallon less than just across the bridge in California. The Flying J truck stop there became desert dessert heaven once they acquired a Cinnabon and a Carvel to go along with their Subway sandwich shop. Even with the cheaper Arizona gas prices, it would still cost me fifty dollars to fill up the gas-guzzling boat of a Mercury I was driving at the time. I would stand at the pumps watching my iPhone go crazy flipping the time back and forth an hour every few seconds, not quite able to decide whether this border location was in Pacific or Mountain Time. And I would find it hard to escape the premises without bringing home a cinnamon roll for my wife and a soft serve sundae for myself.

As for Quartzsite, about 20 miles east of Ehrenberg on Interstate 10, let’s just say that I spent a little too much time there. Bruder failed to mention the Friday night all-you-can-eat fish frys at The Grubstake on Highway 95 (the restaurant is still there but, alas, the fried fish pig-out is history; they sell it by the piece now). I have so many fond memories of that place, from the ghost pepper eating contests advertised on the menu to the NASCAR posters on the walls of the loo to the autographed dollar bills on the ceiling of the dining room to drunk coworkers attempting to recover their misspent youth by dancing to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”

Bruder did, however, visit Silly Al’s, a pizza parlor and bar where I once witnessed the superannuated karaoke hoedown that she describes. I never returned, finding the food overpriced and mediocre. (Let’s be honest: When it comes to Italian food, it’s hard to satisfy a New York boy). She also dropped in on Paul Winer, the naked bookseller of Quartzsite (he does wear a knitted codpiece to cover his whoosie-whatsy) who has chatted with me a number of times, has entertained me by demonstrating his boogy-woogy piano skills on the old upright he keeps in the store, and has sold me a number of esoteric tomes that I unearthed like desert gemstones from the towering disorganized stacks representing shelf overflow and covering nearly every square inch of floor space. Paul’s bare skin resembles old tanned leather, which should come as no surprise considering that 120°F is a perfectly normal temperature at the Q.

As for the locals, we completely ignored the schlocky vendors hawking beads, polished stones and T-shirts, as well as the snowbirds and their cheek-by-jowl RVs crowding the campsites from December through February. We could reclaim the place for ourselves when the temperatures topped the 100 degree mark in March and the out-of-towners evaporated like snowflakes hitting the desert floor. For the next eight or nine months, it would just be us desert rats and our native companions, the lizards, rattlesnakes and cacti of the Southwest.

Another thing that fascinates me about the modern-day nomads described by Bruder is the sociological implications thereof. That these folks often stick together in common cause is no surprise; in some respects, it is no different than the Scrabble subculture that has become so familiar to me. But the eerie, post-apocalyptic, Cormac McCarthyish wandering from place to place, the living from one Social Security check to the next, the maximum 14-day stays on federal lands, the fear of “the knock” from cops or security guards, it all strikes me as the anti-American dream. I certainly don’t blame anyone for attempting to eke out what joy and camaraderie is available in survival mode, but my gosh, is this what the United States has come to? I admire the pride the nomads take in their way of life, even if forced on them rather than freely chosen. It reminds me that the line between dystopia and utopia can be fuzzy indeed.

The nomads refer to themselves as “houseless” rather than “homeless.” As Bruder acknowledges, “the H word” has become a loaded term, fraught with some implications that don’t necessarily apply (alcoholism, drug use, mental illness) and some (poverty) that may strike a little too close to home. It’s as if the road has become the new diaspora. The dispersed keep in touch via websites, blogs and Facebook pages, accessible courtesy of free wifi available outside Starbucks, truck stops and restaurants. And a little voice inside of me says “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” I can’t forget how, as a child, I used to tell my parents that I wanted to live in a car. My mother and father were horrified. But being able to go anywhere and everywhere at a moment’s notice, with just a touch of the gas pedal, seemed like nirvana to me. It sure beat taking baths and doing homework.

These days, as I approach the age of sixty, I have to remind myself to be careful what you ask for. Your dreams might just come true, and they might turn out to be nightmares. One wrong move, I think, and I, too, could end up living in a van as an alternative to living on the street. Even worse, the people who Bruder met remind us that not even a wrong move is needed to face this fate. You can do everything right and still end up with nothing. The current low unemployment rate notwithstanding, the fickleness of the economy and the realities of growing older are cruel indeed. “Part-time at Burger King is not enough money to live on,” says one of Bruder’s new road friends. We are seeing the underside of the leaf we call capitalism, and it is covered in worms.

I must admit that I got quite a kick out of Bruder’s story about her first experience taking a shower at a truck stop, which happened to be at the Pilot off I-10 at the Q (another place I am very, very familiar with, although I’ve never showered there). She headed up to the register to pay for her shower, carrying soap, shampoo and flip-flops in a plastic bag. Only then did she learn, to her consternation, that a shower costs $12. In her case, she got lucky in that a trucker at the next register paid her tab with his rewards card (usable only once every 24 hours), concluding that, heck, he hadn’t had a shower in a week, so what’s waiting one more day.

A few weeks ago, the hot water heater that serves our rented tiny house went kaput. This meant we had no heat, no gas for cooking, and of course, the delightful experience of taking ice cold showers every day. This untenable situation was complicated by the fact that we have become accidental subletters. We had been renting from the owner of the big house in front of the property — that is, until he sold his business and decamped to Arizona with his family. Now he rents out the big house to two women and, while they are certainly nice enough, we are more or less at their mercy. Even worse, they were out of town, about nine hours away dealing with a family emergency. We ended up on the phone, back and forth between the renters down south and the owner in Arizona, trying to figure out who was going to do something about this. Eventually, the water heater was replaced, but not before engaging in the folly of making three fruitless attempts at finding parts and repairing the old unit.

The first day wasn’t too bad; apparently, there was still some hot water left in the lines, so a lukewarm shower was still possible. After that: Ice, ice, baby. Showering became impossible by anyone other than a member of the Polar Bears Club. Resigned to realities, I went to work without a shower.

By the end of the day, I realized that I was beginning to give off a faint odor of body sweat. By the next morning, I was smelling really funky, and I had a big meeting to attend. Just me, a lawyer and all of my bosses, three levels up. Just the five of us sitting at a tiny round table while I gave a presentation. After two days of no shower, my deodorant had decided to give up the ghost. I tried to keep a straight face and hoped no one would notice (as if!). Later in the day, I filled in my immediate supervisor about what was going on, just in case one of the higher-ups had something to say. I sat in my cubicle and stank myself out the rest of the day, trying to stay as far away from people as possible.

My wife texted me at work. Want to go to a hotel and shower? Yes! Oh, yes, please. As I alluded to above, I hated to bathe when I was a kid. Luckily for me, my parents were usually too preoccupied with other things and rarely forced me to take a shower. Being unwashed for weeks (um, months sometimes) didn’t bother me a bit. When my grandparents would come to visit, Grandpa would be appalled. I would tell him that he must be mistaken, because I couldn’t smell anything. “You can’t smell yourself!” he would yell.

Well, now even I could smell myself. This was getting bad. My wife said she couldn’t stand it anymore. I thought the hotel was a really great idea, but by the time I got home from work, she had come up with a cheaper alternative. We could go to the ‘49er Truck Stop and, like Jessica Bruder, shower for $12. But we had to get there by 6:00, after which the showers were open exclusively to truckers. That only gave us a few minutes to drive way out to the west end of town. Neither of us thought we would make it, but to my disappointment, we arrived just in time. As much as I reeked, stripping down to my bare tokhis in a grimy truck stop was nowhere to be found on my 2018 wish list. And just like Bruder, we carried in soap, shampoo, even towels. The truck stop provides a towel, but, eewww, a truck stop towel?

We had to wait about a half hour for a shower to become available. By that time, it was well after six, but no one seemed to care. I couldn’t find a place to sit, so I leaned against an electronic pinball machine that was wedged into the corner. It happened to be Ghostbusters. Goodness, have we gone retro or what? That’s the kind of pin I would have gladly loaded a roll of quarters into in my younger days (and probably would have made change to get a second roll of George Washingtons after that).

Wow, what a blast from the past. I remember seeing the movie in the mid-eighties with a young lady who was home from a Peace Corps assignment in Zaire. I knew her from college and hoped that perhaps she wouldn’t go back to Africa. She did, and I never heard from her again.

At the truck stop, I marveled at all the flags and gates and flashing lights on the machine. Along with the high scores, a message on the LED indicated that the now ubiquitous phrase “You’re toast!” was coined by Bill Murray for the original Ghostbusters movie. I poked the flippers and was treated to clips from the movie. “Either I have a monster in my kitchen or I’m completely crazy” and “it’s the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man!”

Then a shower became available. My wife asked if we had to pay $24 because two of us needed showers and the clerk asked us whether we needed two shower keys. One key, just $12. Good news. We could each take a shower, one after the other.

The shower room was tiny, but it contained a toilet, sink and a little bench. Both of us are big people and we barely fit without tripping over each other. The hot water felt great after a few days without, but the steam was so intense that we had to crack the door open to avoid suffocating. I could barely fit my fat rear on that bench and my wife had to help me put my socks on. But, by gosh, I felt clean! And the next day at work, I didn’t smell like a sewer.

Two days later: Still no hot water at home. I had to go to work in San Francisco for a couple of days, but I was stinking again. Back to the truck stop we went. Another twelve dollars and another shower for two. I waved to the pinball machine on the way out. A trucker was pounding the flippers and racking up the points.

Meanwhile, I prayed that maybe, just maybe, we’d have hot water by the time we got back from the City by the Bay. If not, I knew where we’d end up to de-stink ourselves.

We just spent the last two days with family and we will again on Christmas Day. We have a break in the middle for the purpose of driving up California’s Central Valley to maybe throw a load of laundry in and spend a night sleeping in our own bed before heading north to do it again with another part of the family.

Today is my parents’ 65th wedding anniversary. We had Shabbat dinner at their house on Friday evening, followed by an informal party on Saturday. In between, we drove down to the rural area of southern Fresno County to watch my wife’s three year old grandniece open gifts.

Both my sisters, along with two of my nephews, were present for my parents’ big day. Mom made up the hors d’oeuvres platter, my parents bought the cake at a local supermarket, and one of my sisters did most of the cooking. She and her husband are pesco-vegetarians, but they accommodated my vegan ways by preparing tofu ratatouille, broccoli, rice and potatoes along with their salmon. The carnivores in the crowd had meatballs and franks.

One of my sisters lives over in the Bay Area and commutes to her job in the Central Valley. Working 12-hour shifts in a hospital, she has a crazy schedule and was lucky to get a day off to attend our festivities. My other sister is a teacher in the suburbs of Boston, while her husband is a tech industry exec in Dallas. All three of their kids are in Boston; two work in tech, while one is still in college. After years in Dallas, Sis left her husband behind and decamped for Boston in June, mostly because their anorexic daughter was in and out of the hospital and Sis was worried sick. Before long, my niece told Sis to buzz off, which, understandably, my sister took hard. Still, she enjoys the Jewish community and liberal academic environment that Boston has to offer, a far cry from her red-state experiences in Texas. Back in Dallas, hubby takes care of the house and the cats and is overseas for his job one week each month. He visits Sis in Boston frequently. The thought is that, eventually, they’ll buy a house in Boston. None of us is getting any younger, and hubby is bound to retire sooner or later. Meanwhile, Sis rents a room in a house owned by a couple she knows. She complains that the room is drafty and is usually too cold in the New England winter. But she loves her job and being near friends and her kids.

I am reminded of my parents, who were also separated for a number of years due to their careers. My mother worked in places like Rhode Island and Utica NY while Dad stayed in the house in the suburbs of New York City, making a long drive to visit Mom once or twice each week.

What a way to live, huh? I know that, these days, you have to go wherever the job is, but I always think in terms of wife and husband moving together. Then again, I think of marriage as involving shared finances as well as a shared residence. Yet my parents have kept their finances separate for decades. I used to think this was unusual, but now I’m starting to hear that it’s not so uncommon. Blech!

The funny thing about my family, that was really brought home to me during our visit this week, is that we have next no nothing in common. From a common origin, my sisters and I have shot off in totally different directions in terms of geography, family and career. I’m glad that I don’t see my sisters very often, as I can’t imagine us getting along for more than a few hours every year or so. We simply have different worldviews, and I sometimes wonder whether we’re really from different planets. Certainly I couldn’t ever see calling one of them to ask for advice on a problem. For the most part, I prefer to have as little to do with them as possible.

The disjointedness of our lives became embarrassingly apparent as my sister from Boston attempted to encourage conversation as we all sat together in my parents’ family room on Saturday. There were long pregnant pauses, during which three or four of us would be occupied by apparently fascinating things on our phones, the rest of us absorbed in our own thoughts or staring off into space. Hospital Sis was sprawled out on the couch, nearly asleep. Boston Sis would offer conversation starters such as “Who has an interesting story about their job?” or “Who has done something interesting lately?” or “Has anyone seen any good movies or TV shows recently?” Most of these overtures fell flat after a minute or two, leaving us in physical proximity, but as emotionally distant from one another as we usually are geographically.

When it was time for dinner, we had to rustle up my wife and Hospital Sis, both of whom were fast asleep. Mom decided to wake up Sis by tickling her, which devolved into loud accusations of rudeness from both sides, along with threats never to visit again. Typical for us, I’m afraid. As Trump is so fond of saying, “Sad!” I don’t know why we bother to put on this dog and pony show, regardless of the occasion. Mom is a firm believer that “blood is thicker than water,” that families must stick together regardless of the profound differences between their members. Uh, enjoy?

Finally, when the cake and ice cream was served after dinner (no vegan desserts available, although I declined the offer of an orange), Hospital Sis resorted to web searching on her phone for a site full of courtroom jokes. Some of them were quite funny, primarily at the expense of inept attorneys, and we all laughed at them. Then Dad began to tell the same racist and dirty jokes that he’s told since I was a kid.

Soon, my wife and I drifted off to the family room to visit with my nephew, who told us stories about his life in the Bay Area. Everyone else remained in the living room, from whence I could hear my mother telling family stories about her parents’ emigration from Europe to America, the same stories she’s told dozens of times, year after year.

I’m not coldhearted enough to say no to my parents when they want all of their children present on the occasion of their 65th anniversary. Sixty-five years of fussing and fighting, yelling and cursing at each other. I know I’m not unique in this respect. As Tolstoy famously wrote, “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

As if to prove the truth of Tolstoy’s observation, my wife’s niece called us on FaceTime while we were at my parents’ house. She is 20 years old, has a 5 year old daughter, and can’t figure out what she wants in life. I attempted to give her advice along the lines of being true to herself, as she thinks she led a guy on, who she now wants to let down easy, or maybe not. Respect yourself and insist that he respect you was my recommendation. We had the call on speaker, and I think we put on quite a show for my own family.

As if to add a punch line to a decidedly unfunny joke, we stopped for coffee on the way home today and proceeded to drive over a nearly invisible concrete divider at the entrance to a parking lot, blowing out one of our tires. Right in front of a tire shop, I might add — a tire shop that was closed for Christmas Eve.

This makes two months in a row. Last time, it was on a desolate stretch of interstate in the middle of the Arizona desert on the way to the Grand Canyon. At least this time we had friends nearby who came to our rescue while the Triple A tow truck hauled off our vehicle to the only open tire shop in the area, about 15 minutes down the road. We had one hour until the shop closed, just enough time for them to take off the flat and install a new tire, to the tune of $165.

After sitting atop the leader board in my division for part of the day yesterday, I dropped down to second place late. I have to win all three games today to finish in first. No pressure. Hey, I tell myself, I’ll be “in the money” even if I lose them all. After all, there are cash prizes down to sixth place.

I lose the first game to an old lady from Israel. By a lot. I wreck my spread by leaving an open S on the board at the end, allowing my opponent to bingo out. She chastises me for failing to engage in defensive blocking. Not wishing to be thrown out of the tournament right before the end, I do not utter any of the Scrabble-acceptable words that I feel would be appropriate in that situation. I square the tiles, mumble “good luck” and quickly leave the room. What I really want to do is scream.

Trounced by the blue hairs again. “Trounced” isn’t even the right word. Crumpled up like a used candy wrapper is more like it. Hemingway was right about grace under pressure. I start burping up Cheerios.

Next, I have to play the woman who’s been sitting in the number one position for the last few games. That is, since I’ve been unceremoniously knocked off my throne. Okay, I figure, I must be in third now. But I’ll probably lose to her, go down to fourth, and then finish up in either third or fifth. That depends on with whom I am paired for the final “king of the hill” round.

I return from the rest room and find myself standing in the aisle at my opponent’s table. Her previous opponent is conducting a “post mortem” (commenting on what went wrong and right during the game), marking up her tally sheet, slowly gathering her belongings before she finally moves on and I get to sit down.

I ask my opponent where she’s from. (It’s polite to be friendly to your opponent, even though you want to place a curse on her rack, her tiles, and her mother’s teapot. Easy there, cowboy. She wants the same for you, don’t you know.)

Florida, she tells me, near Fort Lauderdale. I tell her about my grandparents, my aunt and my wife’s friend, all who hail from the area. We figure out who goes first and shake the tile bag. That’s when she asks if I would mind if she runs to the rest room.

“Of course, go right ahead,” I say. Some things you don’t mess with, regardless of the fate you might wish on your opponent. You don’t want anyone peeing in their pants. Not to mention that such a thing would be horrible karma. Next time it will be me who is doing the pee-pee dance and begging pardon of someone sitting across the table.

“I might be a little while,” she warns me.

“That’s fine,” I reply. “Take your time.” What do I care? More time to relax. If I’m just going to lose to this shark, there’s no point in rushing it.

I close my eyes for a minute and remember yesterday, when I, too, had to use the rest room between rounds and took a bit longer than might be expected. As I exited the rest room, here comes the director. “Your opponent was worried about you,” he said. Can you believe that the director was actually headed to the men’s room to track me down in a stall? I had to bite my tongue to avoid blurting out “my opponent doesn’t give a shit about me!” (Shit being the operative word when you have the kind of GI problems that I do.). On second thought, I should have said, “Oh, sorry, director, I was busy jacking off!” Grrrr!

I open my eyes and the chair across the table from me remains empty. All around me, I hear tile bags being shaken and word scores being announced. Here comes the director.

“Who’s your opponent?” I tell him. Then I fill him in on the details. “She went to the rest room. She said she might be a little bit.”

The director starts my opponent’s clock and tells me to neutralize it when she shows up. About a minute later, she does. Here comes the director.

It’s not like she should have been surprised. The rule about starting your clock if you’re late was posted in the tournament flyer. “Didn’t you tell him I was in the rest room?” asks my opponent accusingly the moment Mr. Director leaves the table. I tell her I did. “Why didn’t you tell him I’d be a while?” Now she’s just sounding whiny. I assure her that I relayed the message and that, as far as I’m concerned, she can take as long a rest room break as she likes. I don’t tell her that I’ve been there.

Phoenix, about 7 or 8 years ago. Same director. I was having a particularly bad GI day and ended up stuck in the rest room between games. The director started the clock in my absence; upon my return, I found myself left with just ten minutes to play a 25-minute game. I was so angry that I rushed through the game on pure adrenaline, practically throwing my tiles onto the board the moment my opponent hit the clock. I won, too, to the surprise of the elderly gentleman from L.A. sitting across the table from me.

I thought of this recently while watching World Cup speed skating from Stavanger, Norway on TV. The announcer described the demeanor of one of the Dutch competitors as one of “barely suppressed rage.” Uh-huh, I thought. I get it. The secret I know is that its application is not limited to physical pursuits. I’ve seen how it works with mental ones, too.

But here, at the Grand Canyon, I know that losing just one minute off the clock would have little effect on my first-place opponent. What did not occur to me until later is that having the director start your clock in your absence presents a psychological disadvantage. It may not have been a serious psych-out in this case, but I do think my opponent’s nerves were rattled. I kept the major bingo lanes shut down and generally played in a more defensive style, having been schooled in spades in the previous game. My opponent is behind and begins grasping at straws. She plunks down the phony OUTWRINGS, which I promptly challenge off. I managed to pull off a win.

I head back to the rest room while waiting for the pairings for the final match of the tournament to be posted. The loo is disgusting, as always. A lot of these guys seem to have chosen Scrabble over archery as their chosen pastime simply because they can’t shoot straight. I step my shoes into a puddle of sticky pee as I approach the urinal. I see guys turn around and walk out as soon as they finish their business. “Wash your hands, pig!” is what I’m thinking. Some of my fellow Scrabblers don’t appear to be fully socialized. I wonder if they have mama issues.

In the playing room, there is a hubbub of conversation as we wait. There is talk of flights and airports and shuttles. I mention that we drove all the way from northern California and had a tire blow out on Interstate 40 in the middle of the desert. “You’re hardcore!” opines one of my fellow players. I roll my eyes, but I guess I am. A lot of us move heaven and earth and spend thousands of dollars per year just to play this silly game.

Someone alludes to “the incident.” The word the director used in telling us about it during the pre-games announcement that morning.

If you’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, you may not appreciate just how remote a location it is. This place is truly in the middle of nowhere. I suppose that helps to preserve its natural beauty. But for those of us who have no interest in camping and who generally prefer to experience the great outdoors through works of spectacular photography, the nine-building Maswik Lodge is just a bit out of our comfort zones. My wife’s attitude has understandably deteriorated from mildly annoyed to frustrated to truly pissed off in the last three days. She can work from wherever we are (have laptop, will travel), but depends upon having a reliable internet connection at all times. Unfortunately, the connectivity up here is a joke. Uploads and downloads proceed at a snail’s pace. Email sent first thing in the morning doesn’t arrive until evening. My wife’s work is backed up as it is, and she is about ready to tear her hair out. “If you come to a tournament here again, you’re going by yourself!” she informs me.

It doesn’t help that the food here, well, just plain sucks. Served cafeteria style, you take a tray and walk around to the various food stations. As a vegan, I have the privilege of standing in one line for a baked potato, in another for some black beans, and in a third for a Tepa burger on a gluten-free bun. By the time you make it to the cashier’s station, most of your food is cold. Visitors get to pay premium prices for the privilege of queuing up like cattle for cold food. And then they don’t even get your order right. “This is the weirdest looking veggie burger I have ever seen,” is my first thought upon applying mustard to a grey-looking patty that strikes me as what airline food must look like in a Communist country. I take one bite and spit it out. Let’s just say that the taste of dead animal flesh is unmistakable. I get up and look for a manager, who is already fumbling his way through an apology to another dissatisfied customer. When it’s my turn, he explains that he’s been having a lot of problems with his interns from Thailand. Apparently, they don’t know the difference between a Tepa burger and a turkey burger. Then the manager is summoned to the table next to mine to take a complaint from one of my fellow Scrabble players. She had ordered a Cuban and was served a Reuben. Not that there’s a language barrier or anything.

And then there is the cold. And the dark. At around 7,000 feet in elevation, it gets bloody cold here in the November night. Granted, it’s not exactly sunny and 75 in northern California this time of year, but temps down in the 20s are a bit out of our league. The slightest breeze carries a bitter bite that chills you right through. As for the darkness, the dozens of miles between the park and the nearest city lights render the nights pitch black. Walking down the road from the main building to one’s accommodations, you can barely see the hand in front of your face. We use the flashlight function on our iPhones to see where to step. Others, however, are not so lucky. I suppose disaster was inevitable. Two Scrabblers, walking back to their rooms in the thick blackness. One woman misses the curb and falls. Her face gets pretty scraped up. Her companion bends down to help her, and she falls, too. Breaks her collar bone. Has to be airlifted out to a hospital in Flagstaff. The director tells us he will visit our unfortunate colleague in the hospital on his way home to Phoenix.

Back at my table, the discussion turns to the pluralization of “vowel twos” (2-letter words consisting solely of vowels) — which words take an S and which don’t. Ae? No, it’s an interjection, an exclamation. Ai? Yes, it’s a three-toed sloth. Oi? No, another interjection (although I know from playing online that ois is perfectly acceptable in the Collins dictionary, used by Scrabble players in most of the world outside the U.S. and Canada). What about oe? Does it take an S? “Yes,” I immediately chime in. “It’s a bird.” I detect a dirty look shot in my direction. “From New Zealand,” I add, authoritatively. A fellow player seems pleased, declaring that she will henceforth think of a bird whene’er she sees the word oe plunked on the board, and will know that it can be pluralized.

“No!” cries the player seated next to me. “It’s a wind!” She jumps up and runs to her travel bag in the corner to rummage for her Scrabble dictionary. Bird or wind, we’ve already established that it takes an S. But her mission is to prove that she’s right and I’m wrong.

She plops back down beside me and riffles the pages, seeking the letter O listings. Oe, she shows me, “a Faeroese whirlwind.” That smug look of victory.

“I stand corrected,” I mumble sheepishly, wondering where on earth I got the idea that an oe is a Kiwi ornithological species.

The final game gets underway and I am desperate to win. I must be in second place after winning the last game, I figure. A victory here could put me in first place and net me a $500 prize. I play defensively again, hoping it pans out just like before. Between the two of us, we manage to block most of the bingo lanes and effectively shut down the board. Neither of us is able to get off a bingo in this low-scoring game. But my opponent is able to lay down QUITS for 61 points, handing her the win.

I am sorely disappointed, my first-place dreams dashed. I try to console myself by thinking that I can probably still take third. Someone had borrowed my clock, and I track it down after the score slip is turned in. I pack up my stuff and walk out into the vestibule to take a look at the leader board. Games are still going on, so I know that what is posted represents the state of the tournament after the penultimate game, not the final. The director has drawn a line across the chart below the sixth-place player, to indicate that the money winners lie above that line. My name appears below that line. In estimating my standing, I didn’t take into account the predation done to my spread in the first game of the day.

I am totally disgusted. I buttonhole the director to thank him for a great tournament and beg off the award ceremony, pleading a very long drive home ahead of me. I grab the handle on my heavy Scrabble bag and pull it through the lobby and out to the curb, where I lean against a wall. I take in the bracing air as I text my wife to tell her I’m done. She tells me she’s in the cafeteria having a sandwich and asks me to join her. But I don’t want to go back in there. No way. When I am upset, I cry. So I ask my wife to come on out whenever she’s done. A few minutes later, she shows up with half a sandwich and fries in a Styrofoam take-out container. We walk to the car and then head south, out of the park, stopping in Tusayan, the first town, for me to stuff my face with baked potatoes, care of the drive-through at Wendy’s.

After a 12-hour drive home, the next day I look up oe in each of the dictionaries in my collection. It takes me a while to find it.

First, I consult my trusty Webster’s New Collegiate with the red cover, a sentimental favorite of mine despite its age. My parents gave it to me around the time I started high school, and today it has a place of honor on my desk at work. Nothing. I then check my employer’s standard, the American Heritage. Still nothing. I suppose oe was deemed a sufficiently esoteric word that it didn’t make the cut in the editing process.

I check my gigantic Random House Webster’s Unabridged, where I do find oe listed — as an interjection meaning “oy.” Well, that’s surely not going to take an S! Next, I go to my Chambers, my British dictionary. OE is listed as an abbreviation for Old English, but that’s it. What am I to make of this phantom word that has somehow made its way into the Scrabble dictionary? It’s a bird! It’s a wind! It’s Superman! Uh, it doesn’t exist?

Finally, I reach for the last dictionary on my bookshelf, Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th ed., 1997). And lo and behold, there it is, oe in all its glory. It is indeed a Faeroese whirlwind.

I feel stupid, but not as stupid as I do the following day when the tournament results are posted online. Apparently, I ended up in seventh place, just out of the money. However, the woman in sixth place won a $200 cash prize for finishing highest above seed. Due to a rule that players can’t win more than one cash prize, the sixth place award went to the seventh place finisher, yours truly.

And then I feel stupider still when, two days later, my winnings arrive in the mail in the form of a check for $150. The attached note states that it is for “highest place finisher in the lower half.” The director asks that I email him to let him know that the check arrived.

I do so. I don’t mention that I didn’t finish in the lower half.

We were surprised to encounter an elk at the side of the road at Desert View, near the east entrance to Grand Canyon National Park.

I spent part of this week on a business trip to the southern end of our great state, training staff down in San Diego. The ocean’s moderating influence on air temperature makes the California coast particularly appealing for inlanders like myself this time of year. So I was surprised to learn, while watching live video feeds of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey, that San Diego was under an “extreme heat advisory.” The temperature? 85°F. What I thought to be pleasant is apparently dangerously hot by San Diego standards. I suppose it’s all a matter of what one is used to.

Meanwhile, back home in Sacramento, we continue to experience day after scorching day of 100° plus temperatures, as one of the hottest summers on record marches on into September. Driving north from San Diego, we stopped for lunch in Santa Clarita before chugging over the Grapevine into the Central Valley. The thermometer in our car displayed an outdoor temperature of 112°F. It felt like a flashback to our three years of living out in the Mojave Desert. Our holiday weekend promises more of the same, with the Saturday temperature forecast to hit 111° here in California’s capital. We hide out in our tiny house and blast the A/C. 150 miles to our south, my octogenarian parents (who rarely turn on the central air in their large home) have been paying $400 per month in electricity bills just to keep the house cool enough to avoid heat stroke.

During the monotonous 1,000 mile plus round trip to and from San Diego, it was hard not to notice the roadside signs and billboards up and down the Central Valley along Interstate 5 and Highway 99. I am a bit too young to remember the whimsical Burma Shave signs of yesteryear, but old enough to recall the goofy South of the Border signs that dot Interstate 95 through North Carolina as one approaches that tourist trap in Dillon, S.C. Anyone remember the upside down sign emblazoned with the legend “Pedro Feex Later?” It sounds more than a bit racist now, but as a child in the 1970s, I didn’t know any better and thought it was hilarious. This from a New York Jewish white boy who had never met a Mexican-American and didn’t know what a tortilla is until the age of 35.

Here in California, the signs planted in the fields along the vast empty expanse of freeway cutting through Fresno, Kings and Kern Counties shy away from cheesy advertising in favor of pleas for water. Yes, water. You have to live here to appreciate the never-ending political and financial battles over obtaining more water for agricultural purposes. Now, I don’t pretend to know a thing about California water politics, but I am aware of the constant shrieking and hand-wringing over the relative merits of building tunnels in the Bay Area and high-speed rail service between San Francisco and Los Angeles as opposed to making greater efforts to satisfy the seemingly insatiable thirst of our farmers. I also hear a lot about diversion of Sierra Nevada snow melt runoff away from the Central Valley to satisfy the water needs of southern California cities. Amidst allegations of the south stealing the north’s water, I am reminded of the nation’s bitter division during the Civil War. Indeed, there are perennial proposals for everything from California’s secession from the Union to dividing our sprawling state into two, four, six or eight states of more manageable size with greater local control. If you don’t believe me, check out hashtag #calexit on Twitter or this recent article from the Sacramento Bee or this one from the Los Angeles Times. In California, land of the ballot proposition, anything (no matter how outrageous) can be put to a vote.

With water being the essence of life, it is difficult for anyone to argue against it. However, the signs along the freeway have a tendency to pander to base instincts at the expense of rational thought. One is led to believe that providing more water to California’s agricultural interests is a “no brainer.” But is it, really? And so, without further ado, I present for your entertainment two of my favorite roadside signs that I have seen in multiple locations with a number of minor variations.

“Is growing food wasting water?” The most recent version of this sign features a photo of a young boy with a puzzled expression scratching his head. Um, well, for starters, define your terms, please. What exactly do you mean by “growing food?” Perhaps you are referring to California’s famous fields of lettuce, onions and tomatoes, our orange groves and almond orchards, our world-renowned vineyards. Or perhaps what you really mean are the vast hay and alfalfa fields that suck up water to feed, not our people, but the animals that power the state’s beef cattle, dairy and poultry industries. This type of “growing food” leaves us with a legacy of methane gas that contributes mightily to global warming (I told you it was hot) and waterways polluted with millions of tons of animal feces. If you should happen to think I’m being overly dramatic, by all means take a ride down I-5 past Coalinga and catch a whiff as you whizz by Harris Ranch. The hubris of that operation in posting billboards advertising its restaurant boggles my mind. How would you like your shit today, sir? Rare, medium or well done?

Is growing food wasting water, you ask? I’m surprised that the state’s agricultural industry has the nerve to bring this up. It sure is wasting water when used to sustain hungry and thirsty livestock just long enough to kill the poor beasts and turn them into hamburgers, steaks and Chicken McNuggets. If raising animals for meat and dairy were banned from the state, we’d have more than enough water to grow the plants needed to feed our own people and export to neighboring states and to the world. But agricultural interests don’t want you to know that. They must think we’re ignorant, stupid or both.

“No water for valley farms = No jobs!” Oh, goodness, you’ve got to love this one. Again, define your terms, please. No jobs doing what?? No jobs picking grapes, strawberries and citrus? Check out this article in today’s paper, suggesting that a significant reduction in the number of undocumented Mexicans crossing into the United States to perform backbreaking labor in the fields at low wages has resulted in increased automation and fewer jobs. This has nothing to do with water.

Then, of course, one must consider the folly of the paradigm that is California’s agriculture industry. The PR people will tell you that we are “the nation’s salad bowl” and that we feed the world. Excuse me, but why? Anyone who thinks about our climate for even a minute would have to at least ask. The climate of California’s Central Valley is Mediterranean, just one tick shy of desert. We are a very dry place. It doesn’t rain at all here for most of the year. Our water supply depends largely on how much snow the state’s northern and eastern mountains get in the wintertime. The phrase “seven years of drought” is bandied about regularly. Yes, we have year-round sunshine and suitable land, but who in their right mind would plan extensive agriculture in a desert climate with little water? All of us need a steady, reliable water supply for our homes and families. I say people before agriculture.

Our state’s agricultural industry is largely dependent on irrigation. That means bringing in water from elsewhere because we don’t have much here naturally. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to concentrate our nation’s plant-growing operations in areas that God has blessed with plenty of water instead of in the desert? The Pacific Northwest and New England come to mind. Why deprive the people of our cities of their water supply in order to run the Rain Birds and sprinklers that prop up the state’s agriculture?

When the sign says that no water means no jobs, what it really means is that no water means no agricultural jobs. The state’s big agricultural interests would have us believe that we’ll all be out of work unless we kowtow to their demands to commandeer our scarce water supplies so they can keep making money. This is a lie, pure and simple.

I have to laugh when I hear the wry suggestion that the entire valley be paved over to bring all the call centers here from India and the Philippines. I do get it, though. We have evolved into a post-agricultural, post-industrial economy that focuses on the information industry. Concentrating our state’s economic efforts in that direction instead of wasting them on irrigation not only fits with the realities of climate change but would also create plenty of jobs and bring renewed prosperity to California.

Uncle Guac’s Stupid Sign of the Day

(Hand-written on green construction paper and taped to a telephone pole. I wish I could have taken a photo of it, but I was driving.)

I will buy your house for ca$h! Call Larry.

Oooh, Larry, now aren’t you a stud? Put that dollar bill away, you big spender, you. Actually, I’m not looking for ca$h. I was kind of hoping you would pay me in chicken eggs. Bawk!

It is difficult to adequately explain the intensity of a five-day Scrabble tournament to one who has never experienced it. Yes, it is a grind to play seven or eight games per day for days in a row. And you can’t help but notice the yawns and drooping expressions on the faces of the competitors when the last round of the day is underway and it’s close to 6 p.m. But we always come back for more, spending thousands of dollars and our precious annual vacation time to fly and drive around the country to do it again. As one of my opponents here at Word Cup 7 explains, “it’s like heroin to the vein.”

Merry Scrabble addicts all are we, counting the days until the next tournament, eagerly anticipating the next fix.

Scrabble truly is an all-ages game, as is borne out by the wide range of players here. Over the last few days, for example, I have been soundly trounced by a boy who is on his summer vacation after having finished seventh grade, as well as by a very old lady who has to be close to age 90. The boy, who has won prize after prize here, tells me that he practices with his mom’s boyfriend. Then he kills me by over 150 points. The old lady tells me that winning or losing doesn’t much matter to her and that she’s just glad to still be here and able to play. Then she puts her word prowess on display and proceeds to beat me to pieces.

And we come from all over. The tournament director drove here from Iowa, while the Minneapolis-St. Paul area is well represented by a contingent that traveled from Minnesota. There are players here from Arizona and Florida and Oregon. I am one of five Californians who made it out to New England for this event.

The local newspaper and TV station show up with cameras to shoot video and stills and interview some of the players. The mayor sends a representative with a proclamation. It is a big deal locally.

Many of my fellow Scrabblers have never been to Springfield before, but to me it is something of a homecoming. I lived here for three years while attending law school back in the 1980s. I am pleased to discover that a few of the eateries that I so enjoyed back then are still around and thriving decades later, serving new generations of students.

In many respects, however, it makes no difference what city we’re in when we are caught up in the excitement of the game. When we shake hands and shake our tile bags, announce our scores and hit our clocks, it’s as if we’re lost in another world.

“Hey, did you hear that Trump fired Scaramucci after eleven days?” one of my fellow players announces between games. Indeed, I had not. Accustomed as I am to reading three or four newspapers online each day, I suspend my usual habits when attending a Scrabble tournament. For here, under the crystal chandeliers in the grand ballroom of a big hotel, the world goes away for a while. All that matters is finding that next big play for 90 points, chasing after the elusive triple-triple and notching up another win on our tally sheets.

The Indiana Tollway, representing the joinder of Interstate Routes 80 and 90 from Chicago east into Ohio, runs along the most northern edge of the Hoosier State. Last night, we stopped late in South Bend, famous as the home of football powerhouse Notre Dame University. This is not my first time in Indiana; once, years ago, I stayed the night in Indianapolis on an unhappy cross-country trek with my parents, from Boston to California. I admit to having only a vague concept of the state, a mishmash of images from TV — the Indy 500 auto race, brutal maximum security prisons, discrimination against gays under Vice President Mike Pence (in his days as state governor) and cornball family values à la “The Middle.”

But Michigan somehow feels different. Despite the media’s images of Detroit’s blight and violence, of former auto plants, now boarded up and decamped to Mexico, my thoughts drift to the Holland tulip festival, to the hallowed halls of Ann Arbor, and to the Mackinac Bridge and the Upper Peninsula. With Lake Michigan on the west and Lake Huron on the east, I think of sailboats, seagulls and saltwater taffy.

All of this is foolishness, I know, for Michigan is likely no better or worse than Indiana, its esteemed neighbor to the south. By pure happenstance, however, Michigan will always occupy a special place in my heart as the final piece of my puzzle. For Michigan was, until Monday, the last of the 48 continental United States that I had yet to visit.

I explained to my wife that the Indiana Toll Road flirts with the Michigan border without ever inching over into the Wolverine State. To pull this off would require a bit of strategic planning. We could head north from South Bend into the Niles, Michigan area, but the map seemed to indicate that finding our way back to the interstate might involve some complicated road wrangling. On the other hand, we could proceed about 50 more miles along our trek east and exit the interstate just the tiniest blip south of Sturgis, Michigan. I even found a pizza parlor with a website that promised a decent lunch in Sturgis.

The exit we’re looking for, I told my wife as we entered the freeway and collected a toll ticket, was Star Mills/Sturgis. If we got off in Star Mills IN, we’d be less than five miles from Sturgis MI. My face fell as I examined the list of exits on the toll ticket. No Star Mills. No Sturgis. What now?

I harbored the unreasonable hope that perhaps some minor exits went unlisted on the toll ticket. Then again, I reminded myself, some exits may be closed as several were in the Gary/Hammond area near Chicago. A more likely theory, I realized, is that what looked on the map like an exit to State Road 9 was actually not an interchange, but a mere overpass or underpass. Visions of returning to California with only 47 states under my belt danced through my head. ABM would be my new self-deprecatory joke. All But Michigan.

As we approached a town named Howe, I knew we were getting close to where I wanted to be. Could the Howe exit get us there? And Howe? (Greet adversity with horrible puns, I always say.) The sign does say Highway 9. That looks promising. And then, just before the off ramp, a small sign appeared, “Sturgis.” (No mention of Michigan, as if the Indiana authorities wouldn’t dare utter another state’s name. Foreigners!)

My wife was driving, and I all but yelled “Here! This one! Get off here!” We paid the toll, headed north on Route 9 and were greeted about a minute later with the sign pictured above. A few minutes later, we were enjoying lunch at Mancino’s on Centerville Boulevard in Sturgis, state of Michigan.

Now that I’ve visited each of the 48 contiguous states, what’s next? Well, there’s only one thing left to do. Onward to Alaska and Hawaii!